Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Based at the Westlakes Science and Technology Park in Cumbria, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is responsible for the safe and cost-effective clean-up of the UK's civil nuclear legacy.

It is a non-departmental public body, set up by the Government in 2005 under the Energy Act 2004, to manage radioactive waste for the benefit of future generations. It is expected to handle contracts worth more than £2 billion per year over the next two decades, with a total income of around £1.3 billion per year.

Cumbria's reputation for cutting-edge nuclear technology and environmental sciences has long played a major part in the region's economy, in addition to earning global recognition for its rich resource of specialist skills in the sector. It is this reputation, coupled with its status as the capital of the nation's nuclear industry, which attracted the NDA to the region in 2003.

The NDA is responsible for decommissioning at 20 former UK Atomic Energy Authority and British Nuclear Fuels sites. Many of the sites have specific decommissioning problems arising from buildings and facilities that were in use in the 1940s and 1950s.

In total, it is responsible for:

• 39 reactors (gas, water and metal cooled);

• five fuel reprocessing plants;

• three fuel fabrication plants;

• one redundant enrichment plant; and

• five nuclear laboratory complexes.

Its role is to work in partnership with regulators, site licence companies and their parent body organisations to ensure sites are decommissioned and cleaned-up, and that the waste is disposed of.